Read As I Rode by Granard Moat Online
Authors: Benedict Kiely
As I Rode by Granard Moat (7 page)
Padraic Colum spoke his own verse in a low, emphasized sing-song diction that may have originated with the celebrated
Sixth Reader
. It was undemonstrative but effective. My father used the same voice when I learned from him that a chieftain to the Highlands bound cried, ‘Boatman, do not tarry’. Or that our bugles sang truce, for the night-clouds had lowered and the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky. Or that around the fire one winter’s night the farmer’s rosy children sat. These poems I had never read or seen in print until recently, but they stayed in the memory more or less accurately for many years.
You might not find your favourite piece for recitation within the covers of this book. If not I beg your forgiveness; in my wanderings here and there I might have missed it. Maybe the decent people were chanting it in some townland that I bypassed. But I assume that every man and woman must already know their own favourite recitation off by heart and thus are not dependent on myself or anyone else to provide them with the words. The maker of any anthology should be entitled, within reason, to meet criticism halfway by saying simply: ‘Consider, please, what is in this book. Not what is not in it.’ Or, if you want your own anthology, make it yourself. And the maker of a book of songs and recitations should further be allowed to say: ‘Before you carp or criticize, do me the favour of learning off by heart every poem that is in this book.’
Memorizing maketh a full man. The man who knows, say, a hundred and one poems off by heart should never be short of a party piece, and if, by mischance, he should ever find himself in solitary confinement, he will have a faithful and enduring companion.
I may seem deliberately capricious in the order and arrangement of the poems, songs and recitations; but there is, I hope, a certain method in that. You do not, or should not, recite by categories, and I will not so arrange this book. Nor by authors: it pleases me and may have pleased them that Oscar Wilde should stand side by side with Felix Kearney, the ballad-maker from Clanabogan Planting. There is a higher democracy in the speaking of poems.
Nor should one recite by themes. For to different people the same poem may have different themes, and I would like this book to be used just as the possessors of it would recite on the inspiration or impulse of the moment; they would learn the poems as they come on them, and change the mood as they please. Nobody would wish to stand all the time mouthing patriotism or stuttering love. You will more easily memorize what you fancy at the moment.
Yet it may be wise at times to compel and concentrate the memory, so I will cut or diminish no poem: this would be to insult both poets and reciters. To present things entire may be a good extension for all our memories, particularly those of the young, who seem to rest content, like the rooks in the trees, with a few rhythmic sounds endlessly repeated.
What a splendid test for memory, diction and histrionic ability is that great heroic poem, the lament for Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake, who, like Patrick Kavanagh’s gods, made his own importance. Percy French sang his praises and mourned his passing.
My name it is Nell, quite candid I tell
And I live near Cootehill, I’ll never deny.
I had a large drake, the truth for to spake,
That my grandmother left me and she going to die.
He was wholesome and sound and weighed twenty pound,
The universe round I would rove for his sake.
Bad luck to the robber, be him drunk or sober,
That murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake.
His neck it was green – then most rare to be seen –
He was fit for a queen of the highest degree;
His body so white that it would you delight,
He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a bee;
The dear little fellow, his legs they were yellow,
He’d fly like a swallow and swim like a hake;
But some wicked savage, to grease his white cabbage,
Has murder’d Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake.
May his pig never grunt, may his dog never hunt,
That a ghost may him haunt in the dark of the night;
May his hen never lay, may his ass never bray,
And his goat fly away like an ould paper kite.
May his cat and her fleas the wretch ever tease,
And the pinching north breeze make him tremble and shake;
May a thirsty pup drink up the last sup
Of the monster that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.
May his pipe never smoke, may his taypot be broke,
And, to add to the joke, may his kettle not boil;
May he twist in his bed till the moment he’s dead,
May he often be fed on paraffin oil.
May he swell with the gout, may his grinders fall out,
May he roar, bawl and shout with a horrid toothache,
May his temples wear horns, and all his toes corns –
The monster that murder’d Nell Flaherty’s drake.
May his spade never dig, may his sow never pig,
May no one with wit with him ever deal,
May his door have no latch, may his home have no thatch,
May his turkey not hatch, may the rats eat his meal;
May every old fairy from Cork to Dunleary
Dip him till weary in cowld pond or lake,
Where the pike and the eel will lance the heel
Of the monster that murder’d Nell Flaherty’s drake.
May his dog yelp and growl with both hunger and cowld,
May his wife always scowld till his brain goes astray,
May the curse of each hag that e’er carried a bag
Light on the vag, till his beard turns to grey;
May monkeys still bite him, and gorillas affright him,
And everyone slight him, asleep and awake,
May weasels still gnaw him, and jackdaws still claw him –
The monster that murder’d Nell Flaherty’s drake.
The only good news I have to diffuse
Is that long Peter Hughes and blind piper Craik
And big Bob Manson and buck-tooth’d Hanson:
Each man has a grandson of my beautiful drake;
My bird has dozens of nephews and cousins,
And one I must get, or my heart it will break.
To keep my mind aisy – or else I’ll run crazy.
This ends the whole song of Nell Flaherty’s drake.
Here is James Clarence Mangan interpreting, with some help, what the tribal bard had to say about the passing of the Maguire of Fermanagh:
’
HUSSEY
’
S ODE TO THE MAGUIRE
Where is my Chief, my master, this bleak night, mavrone!
O, cold, cold, miserably cold is this bleak night for Hugh,
Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one through and through,
Pierceth one to the very bone!
Rolls real thunder? Or was that red livid light
Only a meteor? I scarce know; but through the midnight dim
The pitiless ice-wind streams. Except the hate that persecutes him
Nothing hath crueller venomy might.
An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems!
The flood-gates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst wide –
Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean’s tide,
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.
Though he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods,
Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea,
Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he,
This sharp, sore sleet, these howling floods.
O, mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire!
Darkly, as in a dream, he strays! Before him and behind
Triumphs the tyrannous anger of the wounding wind,
The wounding wind, that burns as fire!
It is my bitter grief – it cuts me to the heart –
That in the county of Clan Darry this should be his fate!
O, woe is me, where is he? Wandering, houseless, desolate,
Alone, without or guide or chart!
Medreams I see just now his face, the strawberry-bright,
Uplifted to the blackened heavens, while the tempestuous winds
Blow fiercely over and around him, and the smiting sleet-shower blinds
The hero of Galang tonight!
Large, large affliction unto me and mine it is,
That one of his majestic bearing, his fair, stately form,
Should thus be tortured and o’erborne – that this unsparing storm
Should wreak its wrath on head like his!
That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the oppressed,
Should this chill, churlish night, perchance, be paralysed by frost –
While through some icicle-hung thicket – as one lorn and lost –
He wails and wanders without rest.
The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead,
It overflows the low banks of the rivulets and ponds –
The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds
So that the cattle cannot feed.
The pale bright margins of the streams are seen by none.
Rushes and sweeps along the untameable flood on every side –
It penetrates and fills the cottagers’ dwellings far and wide –
Water and land are blent in one.
Through some dark woods, ’mid bones of monsters, Hugh now strays,
As he confronts the storm with anguished heart, but manly brow –
O! what a sword-wound to that tender heart of his were now
A backward glance at peaceful days.
But other thoughts are his – thoughts that can still inspire
With joy and an onward-bounding hope the bosom of Mac Nee –
Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright billows of the sea,
Borne on the wind’s wings, flashing fire!
And though frost glaze to-night the clear dew of his eyes,
And white ice-gauntlets glove his noble fine fair fingers o’er,
A warm dress is to him that lightning-garb he ever wore,
The lightning of the soul, not skies.
Hugh marched forth to the fight – I grieved to see him so depart;
And lo! to-night he wanders frozen rain-drenched, sad, betrayed –
But the memory of the lime-white mansions his right hand hath laid
In ashes warms the hero’s heart!
Once upon a time, thirty years ago, I found myself writing a serial radio-script on the ‘Songs of Young Ireland’ – for which the music was performed by the Radio Éireann Singers. The previous series, featuring ‘Moore’s Melodies’ and scripted by Brinsley MacNamara, lasted for a very long time, and he was often teased by the novelist Philip Rooney about writing the songs himself and attributing them to Thomas Moore, so as to keep the programme going.
I was more or less challenged to make the songs of Young Ireland last longer than the songs of the Sweet Melodist. As it happened, I failed. But I consulted the then Greatest Living Authority on the matter, Colm Ó Lochlainn at The Sign of the Three Candles, and he told me that I could bring the songs of Young Ireland as close to myself as Francis A. Fahey, who sang of Kinvara and the Ould Plaid Shawl, and could go back as far as William Drennan writing about ‘The Wake of William Orr’:
There our murdered brother lies;
Wake him not with woman’s cries;
Mourn the way that manhood ought –
Sit in silent trance of thought.
Write his merits on your mind;
Morals pure and manners kind;
In his head, as on a hill,
Virtue placed her citadel.
Why cut off in palmy youth?
Truth he spoke, and acted truth.
‘Countrymen, unite,’ he cried,
And died for what our Saviour died.
God of peace and God of love!
Let it not Thy vengeance move –
Let it not Thy lightnings draw –
A nation guillotined by law.
Hapless Nation, rent and torn,
Thou wert early taught to mourn;
Warfare for six hundred years!
Epoch marked with blood and tears!
Hunted thro’ thy native grounds,
Or flung reward to human hounds,
Each one pulled and tore his share,
Heedless of thy deep despair.
Hapless Nation! hapless Land!
Heap of uncementing sand!
Crumbled by a foreign weight:
And, by worse, domestic hate.
God of mercy! God of peace!
Make this mad confusion cease;
O’er the mental chaos move,
Through it speak the light of love.
Monstrous and unhappy sight!
Brothers’ blood will not unite;
Holy oil and holy water
Mix, and fill the world with slaughter.
Who is she with aspect wild?
The widowed mother with her child –
Child new stirring in the womb
Husband waiting for the tomb!
Angel of this sacred place,
Calm her soul and whisper peace –
Cord, or axe, or guillotine,
Make the sentence – not the sin.
Here we watch our brother’s sleep:
Watch with us, but do not weep:
Watch with us thro’ dead of night –
But expect the morning light.
To balance one Ulster voice against another, let us hear that great, gracious and highly related lady, Charlotte Elizabeth, singing the Pride of Londonderry on the banks of the Foyle. The politics of what now follows and of Drennan’s poem may seem to get a little bit entangled; but the words, even in our time, are worth remembering:
Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,
Here, Queen of Erin’s daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign:
A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street,
A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet;
And here she sate alone, boys, and looking from the hill,
Vowed the maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
From Antrim crossing over, in famous Eighty-Eight,
A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate:
She summoned to defend her, our sires – a beardless race –
Who shouted No Surrender! and slammed it in his face.
Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him ’twas their will
That the maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden still.
Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came
(The royal banner o’er him, blushed crimson deep for shame);
He showed the Pope’s commission, nor dreamed to be refused,
She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.
In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill,
For the maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
On our brave sires descending, ’twas then the tempest broke,
Their peaceful dwellings rending, ’mid blood, and flame, and smoke,
That hallowed grave-yard yonder, swells with the slaughtered dead –
Oh brothers! pause and ponder, it was for us they bled;
And while their gift we own, boys – the fane that tops our hill,
Oh, the maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still.
Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright,
We’ll look to One above us who ne’er forsook the right;
Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free,
But, brothers, no surrender, no compromise for me!
We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill,
Yet the maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still.